Introduction
This is a quick outline of a document describing how to set up IP multipathing in our environment. The goal is to implement a standard naming convention for the different addresses as well as for the network adapter group name.
Pre-Requisites
1. Solaris 2.8 10/00 or later must be installed
2. Each interface must have a unique MAC address
3. Hardware adapters must be the same type, you cannot multipath an hme interface with an qfe interface.
4. Must define a network adapter group name
a. For all practical purposes each group will be production therefore, use a default group name of “production”
5. Must define test addresses for each interface
a. For the test addresses use hostname-interface; for example; test-adm-up01-hme0 and test-adm-up01-hme1
6. Must define data addresses for each interface
a. For the primary data address use hostname; for the dummy address use hostname¬-dum. Example, test-adm-up01 and test-adm-up01-dum
7. Must run interfaces in active mode.
8. At initial start if you have not rebooted the server you may need to manually start the in.mpathd daemon. After a reboot this daemon will start automatically if your hostname.interface file is set up with failover configured
Example Configuration
1. Enable unique MAC addresses
a. If you are on the command line:
eeprom local-mac-address?=true
b. If you are at the open boot prom:
setenv local-mac-address? true
c. You only need to enable this at either the open boot prom or the command line but not both. If you set this at the command line you will need to reboot the machine to have the change take effect.
2. Plumb the necessary interfaces; if the interface is down plumb it, if it is already up just leave it alone.
ifconfig interface plumb
3. Confirm that the interfaces have unique MAC addresses
ifconfig -a
4. Edit the /etc/hosts file and add the necessary ip addresses
a. must add a line for the primary interface
b. must add a line for the active dummy interface
c. must add a line for each interface for the test addresses
d. follow the naming conventions defined above in the pre-requisites
5. Be sure that the /etc/notrouter file exists, if it doesn’t create it
a. touch /etc/notrouter
6. Assign interfaces to multipathing group
a. ifconfig interface group group-name
7. Configure each interface with test addresses
a. ifconfig interface interface-name netmask + broadcast + -failover deprecated up
b. Example:
ifconfig hme0 test-web-ue01-hme0 netmask + broadcast
+ -failover deprecated up
8. Configure primary data address
a. ifconfig interface addif interface-name netmask + broadcast + failover up
b. Example:
ifconfig hme0 addif test-web-ue01 netmask + broadcast
+ failover up
9. Configure dummy data address
a. ifconfig interface addif interface-name netmask + broadcast + failover up
b. Example:
ifconfig hme1 addif test-web-ue01-dum netmask + broadcast + failover up
10. Edit the hostname.interface files
a. For the primary interface
Test-web-ue01-hme0 netmask + broadcast + group production deprecated -failover up
Addif test-web-ue01 netmask + broadcast + failover up
b. For the secondary interface
Test-web-ue01-hme1 netmask + broadcast + group production deprecated -failover up
Addif test-web-ue01-dum netmask + broadcast + failover up